The present invention relates generally to multimedia systems and, more particularly, to a method for multimedia streaming synchronization.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional multimedia system 100 including a first source device 102 for providing multimedia streams, and first and second sink devices 104 and 106 that communicate with the first source device 102 for playing the multimedia streams. In operation, the first source device 102 encapsulates the multimedia streams into data packets with corresponding timestamps associated with a first local media clock generated by a first local media clock generator 108. The first source device 102 then transmits the data packets to the first and second sink devices 104 and 106 based on the first local media clock and the timestamps. The first sink device 104 receives the data packets, decapsulates them into the multimedia streams, and plays the multimedia streams based on a second local media clock generated by a second local media clock generator 110 and the corresponding timestamps. The second sink device 106 operates in the same way as the first sink device 104 but based on a third local media clock generated by a third local media clock generator 112.
The first, second, and third local media clocks ideally are expected to have the same frequency, which is determined by a sample rate of the media streams, e.g., 48 KHZ. However, due to hardware drift of different local media clock generators, the first, second, and third local clocks may run faster or slower than each other, which results in an asynchronous problem among the source and sink devices 102, 104 and 106. It is therefore desirable to find a method to synchronize the different source and sink devices to each other.